Advice heard here again and again is that the most important thing you can do in 1L is to focus on your grades. However,all of this advice is from people attending American schools. Information I've gathered vaguely suggests that in Canada, that either may not be the case, or it may not be as strongly the case. "Fit" with a firm seems very important. Most Canadian 1Ls do some sort of legal volunteer work - at least at UBC.

Is there anyone with experience on this who could give some advice? Are grades the only thing one should focus on in Canada? Or do Canadian employers look at ECs and "fit" just as strongly?

ack wrote:Advice heard here again and again is that the most important thing you can do in 1L is to focus on your grades. However,all of this advice is from people attending American schools. Information I've gathered vaguely suggests that in Canada, that either may not be the case, or it may not be as strongly the case. "Fit" with a firm seems very important. Most Canadian 1Ls do some sort of legal volunteer work - at least at UBC.

Is there anyone with experience on this who could give some advice? Are grades the only thing one should focus on in Canada? Or do Canadian employers look at ECs and "fit" just as strongly?

U.S.: Good grades in 1L-2L and good networking skills are key for a job.Canada: Good grades in 1L-2L and decent grades in 3L + ECs are key for a job.

Please note that the Canadian Legal Market is much less saturated than the U.S. Legal Market, less jobs are outsourced, BigLaw doesn't seem to struggle in the north and the Canadian Bar Association doesn't spend her time letting new Law Schools open (For the lulz) like the ABA does practically every year and is actually trying to keep the Law profession just as elite and competitive as Medicine (Serious competition in Prestige between Lawyers and Doctors here in Canada), in U.S., both are screwed pretty much.

Sorry for the wall'o'text but reading, you come to the conclusion that there is definitely more good jobs in Canada, but if you come from a U.S. Law school, you will mostly get ditched because the CBA only recognizes Canadian/Commonwealth/France(For Quebec only) Candidates.